On the eve of his New York mayoral election victory, Zohran Kwame Mamdani posted an ad on social media soundtracked by Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” The video, like much of Mamdani’s campaign, went viral, as its “New York is a-changin’” slogan rapidly spread across social media. By the following morning, however, it had been removed from X with a takedown notice: “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright holder.” Unsurprisingly, this was not a snub by Dylan himself but an apparent decision by Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), The New York Times reports. In a statement, UMPG, which acquired Dylan’s songwriting catalog in 2020, said, “As a longstanding policy, we do not license Bob Dylan compositions for projects involving political figures.”
The publishing company has previously denied a request by the Mamdani campaign to license the song, The Times reports, citing two anonymous sources briefed on the matter. UMPG did not explicitly say it had ordered the ad’s removal; copyright violations are sometimes detected electronically, prompting automatic takedowns. As of Thursday morning (November 6), the video is still available on Instagram and TikTok.